364.4 Smoots and an Ear on the Harvard Bridge

Walk the Harvard Bridge between Back Bay and MIT and you will notice painted marks on the sidewalk every few paces, each labeled with a number. They count smoots. In October 1958, an MIT freshman named Oliver R. Smoot, pledging the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, lay down on the bridge again and again while his fraternity brothers marked his length and moved him along. He was five feet seven inches tall. The bridge came to 364.4 smoots, "plus or minus one ear," as the painted inscription puts it. The marks have been kept up by students and fraternity alumni ever since, and in 2009 a plaque was added to the bridge. The unit has since entered the American Heritage Dictionary. Smoot himself went on to chair the American National Standards Institute and lead the International Organization for Standardization.